Chike's School Days
S(caps)arah's last child was a boy, and his birth brought great joy to the house of his father, Amos. The child received three names at his baptism—John, Chike, Obiajulu. The last name means 'the mind at last is at rest'. Anyone hearing this name knew at once that its owner was either an only child or an only son. Chike was an only son.
His parents had had five daughters before him. Like his sisters, Chike was brought up 'in the ways of the white man', which meant the opposite of traditional. Amos had many years before bought a tiny bell with which he summoned his family to prayers and hymn-singing first thing in the morning and last thing at night. This was one of the ways of the white man. Sarah taught her children not to eat in their neighbors' houses because 'they offered their food to idols'.
And thus she set herself against the age-old custom which regarded children as the common responsibility of all so that, no matter what the relationship between parents, their children played together and shared their food.
One day a neighbor offered a piece of yam to Chike, who was only four years old. The boy shook his head haughtily and said, 'We don't eat heathen food.' The neighbor was full of rage, but she controlled herself and only muttered under her breath that even an Osu was full of pride nowadays, thanks to the white man. And she was right.
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In the past, an Osu could not raise his shaggy head in the presence of the free-born. He was a slave to one of the many gods of the clan. He was a thing set apart, not to be venerated but to be despised and almost spat at. He could not marry a free-born, and he could not take any of the titles of his clan.
When he died, he was buried by his kind in the Bad Bush. Now all that had changed, or had begun to change. So that an Osu child could even look down his nose at a free-born, and talk about heathen food! The white man had indeed accomplished many things.
Chike's father was not originally an Osu but had gone and married an Osu woman in the name of Christianity. It was unheard of for a man to make himself Osu in that way, with his eyes wide open. But then Amos was nothing if not mad. The new religion had gone to his head. It was like palm-wine.
Some people drank it and remained sensible. Others lost every sense in their stomach. The only person who supported Amos in his mad marriage venture was Mr. Brown, the white missionary, who lived in a thatch-roofed, red-earth-walled parsonage and was highly respected by the people, not because of his sermons, but because of a dispensary he ran in one of his rooms. Amos had emerged from Mr. Brown's parsonage greatly fortified. A few days later he told his widowed mother, who had recently been converted to Christianity and had taken the name Elizabeth.
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The shock nearly killed her. When she recovered, she went down on her knees and begged Amos not to do this thing. But he would not hear; his ears had been nailed up. At last, in desperation, Elizabeth went to consult the diviner. This diviner was a man of great power and wisdom. As he sat on the floor of his hut beating a tortoise shell, a coating of white chalk round his eyes, he saw not only the present, but also what had been and what was to be.
He was called 'the man of the four eyes'. As soon as old Elizabeth appeared, he cast his stringed cowries and told her what she had come to see him about. 'Your son has joined the white man's religion. And you too in your old age when you should know better. And do you wonder that he is stricken with insanity? Those who gather ant-infested faggots must be prepared for the visit of lizards.'
He cast his cowries a number of times and wrote with a finger on a bowl of sand, and all the while his nwifulu, a talking calabash, chatted to itself. 'Shut up!' he roared, and it immediately held its peace. The diviner then muttered a few incantations and rattled off a breathless reel of proverbs that followed one another like the cowries in his magic string.
At last, he pronounced the cure. The ancestors were angry and must be appeased with a goat. Old Elizabeth performed the rites, but her son remained insane and married an Osu girl whose name was Sarah.
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Old Elizabeth renounced her new religion and returned to the faith of her people. We have wandered from our main story. But it is important to know how Chike's father became an Osu because even today when everything is upside down, such a story is very rare. But now to return to Chike who refused heathen food at the tender age of four years, or maybe five.
Two years later he went to the village school. His right hand could now reach across his head to his left ear, which proved that he was old enough to tackle the mysteries of the white man's learning. He was very happy about his new slate and pencil, and especially about his school uniform of white shirt and brown khaki shorts. But as the first day of the new term approached, his young mind dwelt on the many stories about teachers and their canes.
And he remembered the song his elder sisters sang, a song that had a somewhat disquieting refrain: 'Onye nkuzi ewelu italipiagbusie umuaka.' One of the ways an emphasis is laid in Ibo is by exaggeration so that the teacher in the refrain might not actually have flogged the children to death.
But there was no doubt he did flog them. And Chike thought very much about it. Being so young, Chike was sent to what was called the 'religious class' where they sang, and sometimes danced, the catechism. He loved the sound of words and he loved rhythm.
During the catechism lesson, the class formed a ring to dance the teacher's question. 'Who was Caesar?' he might ask, and the song would burst forth with much stamping of feet. _Siza bu eze Rome Onye nachi enu uwa dum._ It did not matter to their dancing that in the twentieth century Caesar was no longer ruler of the whole world. And sometimes they even sang in English. Chike was very fond of 'Ten Green Bottles'.
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They had been taught the words but they only remembered the first and the last lines. The middle was hummed and hieed and mumbled:
_Ten grin botr angin on dar war, Ten grin botr angin on dar war, Hm hm hm hm hm Hm, hm hm hm hm hm, An ten grin botr angin on dar war._
In this way, the first year passed. Chike was promoted to the 'Infant School', where work of a more serious nature was undertaken. We need not follow him through the Infant School. It would make a full story in itself.
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But it was no different from the story of other children. In the Primary School, however, his individual character began to show. He developed a strong hatred for arithmetic. But he loved stories and songs. And he liked particularly the sound of English words, even when they conveyed no meaning at all. Some of them simply filled him with elation. 'Periwinkle' was such a word. He had now forgotten how he learned it or exactly what it was. He had a vague private meaning for it and it was something to do with fairyland. 'Constellation' was another.
Chike's teacher was fond of long words. He was said to be a very learned man. His favorite pastime was copying out jaw-breaking words from his Chambers' Etymological Dictionary. Only the other day he had raised an applause from his class by demolishing a boy's excuse for lateness with unanswerable erudition.
He had said: 'Procrastination is a lazy man's apology.' The teacher's erudition showed itself in every subject he taught. His nature study lessons were memorable. Chike would always remember the lesson on the methods of seed dispersal. According to the teacher, there were five methods: by man, by animals, by water, by wind, and by explosive mechanism. Even those pupils who forgot all the other methods remembered 'explosive mechanism'.
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Chike was naturally impressed by the teacher's explosive vocabulary. But the fairyland quality which words had for him was of a different kind. The first sentences in his New Method Reader were simple enough and yet they filled him with a vague exultation: 'Once there was a wizard. He lived in Africa. He went to China to get a lamp.' Chike read it over and over again at home and then made a song of it. It was a meaningless song. 'Periwinkles' got into it, and also 'Damascus'.
But it was like a window through which he saw in the distance a strange, magical new world. And he was happy.
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